


Other Frustrations

by missalline



Category: Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: Gen, Masturbation, mostly-platonic handjob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 12:03:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8623822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missalline/pseuds/missalline
Summary: Stephen is having a problem with his penis (or rather, the combination of his penis and his hands).





	

He knew that he had been under the mistaken impression that this would be a faster process. He really did. The timeline of his ‘find Kamar Taj/get healed/go home/get job back (get Christine back)’ plan definitely had been a bit… off. Of course, he still hoped it would go that way, even if on a slightly longer schedule than anticipated. He just didn’t think it would be _so slow._

He understood the need for study and practice, he was a doctor after all, but he missed home. He missed things he couldn’t get back, like his job and his apartment, but he also missed things he could get back, like his friends. He missed New York and the amenities it provided. Right now, specifically, he missed the sex shops with their variety of helpful toys. His hands just didn’t have the grip strength and his fingers couldn’t curl enough for any decent sort of masturbation. If he’d know he was going to be here so long he might have actually braved the embarrassment of packing something and bringing it with him, but he hadn’t. So right now, late at night in his borrowed bed, surrounded by walls that did _not_ block out noise, covered by only a thin sheet because this time of year it was hot enough that anything more was too much, he had to settle for unsatisfactory rutting against the mattress.  

********

The first night he was home from the hospital had been frustrating in more ways than one. The sight of piano caused a physical ache in his chest. Neither he nor Christine trusted his hands with the kitchen knives. There were a whole host of other problems, too. (And yelling. So much yelling. That night and every other time she tried to help him. Looking back on how he had acted, Stephen really doesn’t know why she stuck around as long as she did.)

It took a few hours, but eventually he gave on up everything else he was trying to get done and went to take a shower. He wanted to wash the hospital off. Maybe, he thought, he could even manage that orgasm that he had been wanting for weeks but couldn’t do anything about because he had still been hospitalized. It didn’t occur to him until he was already pretty worked up that he didn’t have the grip for it. He could hardly curl his fingers, and any amount of pressure on his hands severely hurt.

Stephen knew that that was the moment that he had actually understood that he wasn’t getting better, standing in the shower looking down at the erection he couldn’t do anything about. He doesn’t know how long he stood there before Christine came looking for him. The water wasn’t exactly cold yet, but it wasn’t hot either.

The door opened and he could tell from his peripheral vision that she had poked her head in just enough to see that he was still upright. “You doing alright?” she asked gently. When he didn’t answer she walked over and pulled the curtain enough to look at him. “Stephen?” she asked again. He just stared at the shower wall, trembling hands held loosely in front of him. Her eyes dropped to his hands, which brought the erection to her attention. “Oh,” she said softly, “Well that’s…” she trailed off and paused for a while before continuing. “Do you want me to take care of that?”

He shouldn’t have taken her up on it, but he was desperate and sad, and her fingers wrapping around his penis felt _so good_. It just another thing he knows he has to make up for.

She stayed that night, her sleeping body lightly touching his as he stared at the ceiling waiting for sleep to come. He only knows he fell asleep because she was gone when he woke up. When he went looking for he found a note on the kitchen counter. “ _Gone for groceries. Be back soon.”_ Among the bags she finally brought back was one constructed out of inconspicuous plain brown paper. It got set aside, forgotten until after Christine had left.

The contents, he discovered, were… interesting. And useful. And sent a very clear “I’m not doing that again” message.

Those toys, and the couple he had bought for himself, had all been boxed up before he left for Nepal. Everything else he owned had been packed away, too, and the boxes tucked in the attic of an old friend who lived out in the suburbs.

********

A few month into his stay at Kamar Taj another young, male apprentice approached Stephen while he was leaving the library.

“A group of us go into the city sometimes,” he said as the pair walked towards the sleeping quarters, “There’s this nightclub frequented by tourists looking to ‘expand their spiritual horizons’. We find that actually means having sex with strangers in foreign countries.”  The slightly gleeful tone of the other man’s voice made Stephen cringe, but he had no excuse to tell him to leave. 

“You should come,” he said, “next time we go. I mean, _I_ prefer to get off with someone else and my hands _work_. I can’t imagine how awful going solo must be for you.” By this point they had reached the door to the sleeping quarters, so he fell silent and they went their separate ways.

As disgusted as he had been with it earlier, the idea of sex with _anyone_ started to sound good after another disappointing rut against the mattress. So, the next time they went he tagged along and fairly quickly found himself talking to a pretty young women. After a couple of hours spent talking and dancing, she invited him back to her hotel.  He didn’t stay after they had sex. The one-night-stand left him feeling _dirty_ and he wanted to get back to where he knew he could be safe and clean. He decided in the bath that he would rather deal with another year of unfortunate orgasms rather go back to that club.

********

The Ancient One liked to have tea with each of her students individually at least once every two weeks. Along with teaching them magic she saw herself as advisor and counselor. Part of the duty of the later role was checking in with them and making sure they were doing alright. Stephen went to have tea with her three days after the nightclub incident.

“So,” she said once they were settled, “you went to the nightclub.”

Stephen looked down at the cup in his hands. This felt exactly like the time when he was 16 and his mother had caught him going down on his girlfriend. “I did,” he confirmed, still not looking up, “I didn’t enjoy it.”

“No,” she said, “I didn’t think you would.”

He looked up at her know, searching her face for answers. “If you knew I wouldn’t enjoy it why did you let me go?”

“Because,” she said with a slight smile, “It was a realization you needed to make on you own. In your previous life you were not opposed to using people when it suited your needs. Now, using someone for your own personal gains feels wrong. That is a significant change.”

********

Taking up residence in the New York Sanctum is surprisingly easy. While the Sanctum itself is fairly massive, the ‘Master’s Suite’ could easily be mistaken for a regular apartment (if you didn’t have to walk through the Sanctum and past plethora of mystical artifacts, that is). Most of the furniture there already belonged to the Sanctum, and what _had_ actually belonged to his predecessor had passed into the possession of the Sanctum upon his death. The friend who had been storing his things paid for a truck and movers for this things as a house warming gift. Wong cast a shimmer so that they _did_ see a normal apartment building. It just made things easier. Everything came together to allow Stephen to settle in to his new home.

However, he quickly realized that his monetary situation was going to be a substantial problem. He couldn’t _do_ _anything._ He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d tolled the Ancient One that he had spent his last dollar getting there. Now that he was living on his own again for the first time in about a year that was actually becoming a problem.

Although he was slightly ashamed of it, one of his bigger frustrations was once again his trouble masturbating. The toys he’d unpacked were certainly better than the rubbing against the mattress he’d been doing for a year, but it still wasn’t good. He wanted to invest in toys that would make it better but the kinds of things he wanted were not cheap.

He expressed his frustrations to Christine when she came over for drinks a few weeks after his move.

“I guess I just don’t get why want new masturbatory aids so badly,” was all she could offer in return.

He took a sip of his beer, giving her a look that she knew from experience always proceeded something mischievous. “How long had we been sleeping together before I asked you do to That Thing?”

She blushed, memories of That Thing springing to the front of her mind. “A few months.”

“Exactly,” he said, surging forward in his chair, “ _months_. I get bored of routine.”

“Well, you must have some sort of income,” she said in an effort to deflect the conversation away from That Thing, “I’ve been through your cabinets, they’re not empty.”

He smiled at her. “Finish your beer.”

She looked at him slightly askance, but did as he said. And then watched in shock as the glass refilled itself.

“Almost everything here is enchanted,” he explained, “the cabinets are full because they _restock themselves_. Produce just shows up and doesn’t go bad. I don’t pay for any of the upkeep here. Property taxes, internet, cable, everything is already taken care of. I’ve asked how but no one yet has been able to give me an answer.”

He sat back, looking a bit dejected. “Don’t get me wrong, not having to worry about paying a mortgage or going grocery shopping or anything like that is great. I’m definitely not complaining about it. I just wish I could supplement beyond the basic needs.”

“Then you need to get a job,” she told him. They both knew it was easier said than done.

********

About a week later Stephen had to deal with some inter-dimensional… thing. He really didn’t know what it was, only that it was bright pink and slimy and somehow smelled like boiled hot dogs. It was unsettling and not something he wanted to think about too much. So finding Christine waiting for him when he walked back into the Sanctum was a welcome surprise.

“I think the building let me in,” she said with a slightly awkward laugh.

Stephen nodded. “She’s knows you’re to be trusted.”

The compliment made Christine smile brightly. “I came by because I have something I want to talk to you about,” she said, holding up a pile of papers, “but it looks like you maybe want to shower?”

“Desperately,” Stephen confirmed, “make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He left and showered quickly, coming back smelling of the much more pleasant soap.

Since she was there and he was cooking anyway, Christine stayed for dinner. She caught him up on gossip from the hospital and he gave her some of the weirder details from his encounters with the magical and unusual. He asked after her family and she his. All in all perfectly nice and normal dinner conversation.

When they were done dishes were set aside, or in the case of Stephen’s fork un-enchanted. “You had something you wanted to talk to me about?”

Christine took a deep breath, immediately and clearly apprehensive. “There’s this free clinic,” she said, holding up a hand to stop his objections before he could voice it. “I know,” she said, “I know. They’re understaffed and underfunded and usually don’t have the best equipment and put practitioners in all kinds of legal and ethical dilemmas because some of the people who end up there go there because they can’t go anywhere else, but,” she said, stopping to take a breath and continuing at a much slower pace, “they’re understaffed, and underfunded, and those two things make them a lot more willing to keep a doctor on staff who sometimes doesn’t show up because he has to go fight hot dog slime.” That at least drew a short bark of a laugh from him. She took that as an opportunity to hand him the paperwork. “It’s still medicine,” she offered, “It’s still helping people.”

She stopped and got up, taking the empty plates and putting them in the sink. “And since everything else it taken care of,” she said, turning back to him and motioning around the room, “it would actually be a livable wage for you. It’s not a lot, but it would let you ‘supplement beyond the basic needs’.” Seeing that he was actually reading through the paperwork, which meant that he was considering it, she turned back to the sink and started washing the dishes.

“Volunteer medical care for practitioners?” he asked a few minutes later.

“Part of the benefits package,” she said over her shoulder, “they can’t afford to provide full medical coverage, which, by the way, is something else you need to look into, but they do this thing where they ask other providers to volunteer a couple of hours to care for their staff. That’s why I brought you the paperwork for this one.”  

“Is there some medical care I’m unaware I need?” he asked, mostly joking.  

“Stephen,” she said cautiously, “You need to see an occupational therapist again. Even with the nerve damage you should have more strength back by now.”

“Why does it matter?” he asked, serious again, “I can compensate for most things with magic.”

Christine huffed and turned back to him frustrated. “It matters because I can’t give you hand-job every time you get a boner in the shower. It matters because you told me you dislike one-night-stands and that the toys aren’t enough anymore. And it matters because the longer you go on being sexually frustrated the longer I have to hear about you being sexually frustrated because I’m the only one you’re comfortable telling. So please Stephen, for the sake of your penis, for the sake of me no longer having to hear about your penis, _please_ make this work.”

After a long, more-than-slightly awkward silence, Stephen finally spoke. “I’ll call them tomorrow. I promise.”

The director of the clinic happened to be there when he called and begged him to come in for an interview that day. She offered him a job on the spot, even after he cautioned her that sometimes he might not show up. His first day was a week after Christine brought him the paperwork.

********

There were days when practicing medicine again was wonderful. There were also days when it was awful. But the full time nurses and other part-time providers on staff knew how to deal with it. Surprisingly enough, there wasn’t a single person among them he didn’t actually like. Of course, there were days where he was late, didn’t come in at all, or left early. But he worked diligently and would willingly take on the patients that were rude or obnoxious. They all kind of viewed it as a trade. He took on the worst patients when he was there and everyone else overworked when he wasn’t.

The director of the clinic started her search for an occupational therapist for him with the therapist that Stephen had worked with before. She ended it there, too. He agreed to volunteer so long as the words ‘bachelor’s degree’ were never again uttered in his presence. About ten minutes into the first session he made a lame “who are you and what have you done with Stephen Strange,” joke, which they both actually laughed at. They started to get along better after that. Stephen started to improve.

********

A few months later he called Christine during her lunch break. “Christine,” he said urgently, “I know you’ve put a moratorium on the subject, but I need to tell you something about my penis.” It was possibly the very last thing she expected which, after a moment of shock, caused her to burst out laughing.

“Okay,” she said, still giggling, “but only because you used that exact phrasing.”

“I took care of it myself this morning.”  

Any other time a man who she wasn’t dating telling her about a successful masturbatory session would be grounds for her never talking to him again, but this was different. “That’s great Stephen,” she said sincerely, “I am actually really happy for you.”  

It was a milestone after all.


End file.
